Is The Next WikiLeaks Dump All About Bank Of America?

By Ben PopkenDecember 1, 2010

Why should politics get all the fun? WikiLeaks has promised to release a trove of information about a “major” bank in 2011. And based on a comment WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange made to Computer World in 2009, folks are speculating that the next massive dump will be 5 gigs of data from a Bank of America executive’s hard drive. The main question is how to present it. Well, slideshows and infographics and popup ads, obviously.

Agree about the Chase comment, would love to see some inside beef on their practices, though in relation to EMC (one of their recent acquisitions)…….been having a seriously difficult time getting a short sale processed and approved…..

Because inside documents from a major bank will no doubt be full of information directly regarding consumer issues (products, fees, customer service etc), both within BoA and the banking industry in general. Is that enough reason for you?

It is on consumerist because you clicked on it. And because of that it paid for Ben to eat lunch Then by commenting and reloading the page, you paid for his dinner too. And then I clicked on it, so I got breakfast, and since I’m commenting Im now covering lunch tomorrow. You may check the replies which then pays for dinner.

have you really not noticed that THERE ARE NO ADS on Consumerist, and that there’s a little graphic saying “WE DON’T TAKE ADS” at the bottom of EVERY post? The site is run by Consumer Reports and largely paid for by donations.

Ben has absolutely no incentive to post fluff ‘for page loads’. The Consumerist is the only major blog I’ve read that is willing to forgo advertising revenue to pay more than lip service to impartiality. Maybe you could appreciate that as well, or at least notice it.

I don’t think you understand how business works. If there were “absolutely no incentive” for increase page views, then this site flat out wouldn’t exist, especially after the for-profit Gawker media dropped it (considering it performed horribly compared to their other blogs). Increased site views equates to increased promotion of Consumer Reports, which equates to increased revenue for CU. Just because an entity is “non-profit” doesn’t mean they don’t try to maximize their revenue as much as possible.

As I said in both the context of the post and conversation, there is no incentive for them to post fluff, specifically fluff that draws the ire of commenters. They do not passively gain revenue by people looking at the site, they do it by having people appreciating the site and its message enough to be interested in the parent organization’s offering or to donate.

If you want to make up straw man arguments to knock down, put them in someone else’s mouth.

The only bad thing about the last hubbub in the Wikileaks dump is the fact the info showing just how bad the Turkey genocide of Armenians is being swept under the rug amid all the talk about Iran’s nuke capabilities.

But, yeah, there is nothing bad about WikiLeaks and hearing politicians say things like “This is an attack on the world!” is really funny. God forbid we have transparency in government, I know.

“But your Honor, I object! My clients expected privacy when they discussed the contract killing of the victim. It is wrong that the police used electronic devices to learn of this. And it is wrong that the recording of my clients, in their own words, are exposed for everyone to hear. This will ruin their reputations and be a very bad example for the Whole World!”

Should criminals have an expectation of privacy?. It is ironic that some of the elected officials who get to define “criminal” are themselves exposed as criminals.

Yes, criminals should be (and are) given the benefits of privacy. To quote A Man for All Seasons:

William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

It’s never hard to extend rights to people and groups that you agree with; the important thing is that you’re able to extend those rights to the people and groups you absolutely despise. Unless you think everything that is said and done for an organization should be a matter of public record, the leaking of confidential information should be seen as a bad thing.

Privacy… as in keeping the voting public in the dark? You’ll probably say “don’t put words in my mouth” and I’ll say that’s nothing more than connecting dots. When government does things behind closed doors, that’s one more thing the public doesn’t know about what the government’s doing. And an ill-informed public can not make a fully informed decision about who to vote for.And people wonder why we’re in this little mess.

The general public is far too stupid to truly understand and grasp the things the government does, especially when reports are taken out of context. You’re talking about citizens of a nation who will basically believe anything without any semblance of justification. There is plenty of information out there that the mob-mind will get its panties in a twist over for no good reason, and frankly an easily-influenced group of people with information it can’t handle is infinitely more of a threat than a closed-door meeting or two.

So you see nothing wrong with, say, kidnapping an innocent citizen of a sovereign nation, then threatening that nation with economic sanctions and military intervention should they attempt to arrest the men involved in the kidnapping? Because it looks like that happened in Germany. And there would be no proof of it, were it not for the release of the cables.

THAT is why we need open and accountable government. People talk about “socialism,” but what’s more reminiscent of the USSR than making people disappear?

99 percent of the info is from appointed officials or career bureaucrats. What exactly was illegal? Your argument is invalid.

In fact, I’d say doctor/client confidentially (DCC) info is less important than backroom diplomacy (BD). DCC protects the client from the doctor’s big mouth. The doctor couldn’t care less if the info was out. But BD info is private to both sides.

If you honestly think that analogy is correct, there is no help for you.

If “regular” citizens can’t have the conversations here and expect privacy from law enforcement, why should out governments? Along the same lines, I feel that police officers who are found guilty of any crime should have 3-4 times the penalty. When you are in a position of power you should be held more accountable, not less, since there are many more who are affected by your actions.

Honesty and openness is a good thing, even if it makes people uncomfortable. In the end, we’re all better off knowing truth.

How about both? That would be peachy. The data dump on BoA I really have no problem with because they are a private company and everyone knows they are guilty as sin of a ton of wrongdoing but nobody with the authority will do anything about it. If enough information about BoA hits the light of day the authorities would have to act.
I would rather see Wikileaks do more of this than hassling the state department.

Then there are people who have comcast and would try to read wikileaks…. With comcast’s trackrecord, I think you know what would happen. Their traffic priority would be ranked so low that it would just comcastically drop connections.

I don’t watch it, and it still bothers the shit out of me. Fox has brainwashed a large chunk of our nation and any propaganda machine like it should be destroyed.

To be clear, I watch NO 24-news channels, but anyone with a LOGICAL brain knows that Faux News is the largest propaganda machine since Germany in WWII and is ruining our country.

Anyone who believes that Glenn Beck, Palin, more tax cuts and drilling are the answers to our country’s problems deserve what they are asking for. I however, don’t deserve living in a financially and ecologically bankrupt society with everyone only looking out for their narrow self interests.

There you go again. “Left-leaning/progressive” != “OMG SOCIALIST”. If you’ve ever actually watched MSNBC during the day you’d find that most of the daytime commentators are pretty centrist, even right-leaning (Pat Robertson is one of their commentators.)

Yeah, I don’t know that I can get on board with the release of a private entity’s corporate files. You want to expose the government, fine (though it’s still certainly sleezy in its own regard). This seems flat out wrong.

If businesses claim to do business with the upmost integrity then their internal correspondence should not worry anyone. Yes, you don’t want your competitors reading about what kind of prices you get from your (possibly common) suppliers. Yes, you don’t want internal product development exposed to your competitors. But I don’t think that sort of stuff is what Wikileaks is talking about releasing. I think what they’re planning to release (and I am by no means knowledgeable of any of this, just common sense / educated guess) is a lot of emails about the thoughts of their analysts on the cratering of the world economy, mortgage meltdown, and subsequent mergers and forced takeovers that whatever bank was involved in.

I’m indeed just about as knowledgeable as you on their intentions here (sure, I could research…but I won’t), but I just have a hard time believing that there are 5 gigs of “bad” data out there that are completely devoid of any trade secrets, proprietary information, etc.

Looking at my work mail files, the sum of the thousands of emails I’ve sent/received over the last 3.5 years is less than 5 GB in size (with a large portion of that being what the company would probably consider “guarded info”). Exposing wrong-doings and ethical violations is fine and dandy, but I’m almost positive that some personal/secret/etc. data is going to get through. It’s BOA’s right to protect that information, and I hope they pursue all means to do so.

Yea, like poor poor Enron. What’s up with exposing private companies that are committing illegal & unethical activities?!? Their internal dealings should have been kept secret, I’m sure everything would still be peachy with them!

Isn’t this considered somewhat malicious? If the leak contains information of wrong-doing (which it probably does), what would happen to their stock price? Pull your investments out of any bank before this comes out. There is a chance it isn’t BoA.

I’m invested in BoA and even if the leaks are about them I plan to stay invested. If everyone took your advice the market would implode. Any dip they take will likely be corrected within a week of the news.

I disagree with their military and defense leaks but would LOVE to see a few fat cat banks like BOA or Chase have their internal memos leaked, even better if we get the names of some politicians colluding and proof of how they raked American taxpayers over the coals.

So just because a corporate is public, that means we should be able to see every little thing that goes on inside it, even things that were NEVER meant for public eyes?

Let me ask you this: What if wikileaks posted a bunch of private emails you sent to your wife and other friends so the whole world could read them? You’d be pissed and rightfully so. Why? Because some things are meant to be KEPT PRIVATE.

It’s so stupid that we should live in a world where every little thing we say or do or write could potentially end up in the public eye.

Negative – corporations do have many legal rights and protections as individuals. Though, this isn’t a debate on Corporate Personhood.

Still, the analogy is partly valid. It’s all fun and games until you’re affected by someone airing information you believed to be private. Say you are working for bank XYZ and send a personal email to your girl/boyfriend via your corporate email account. Fair game for public domain, all the while shouting “freedom of information!”?

Actually, yes, if I used company email to send personal emails I don’t expect privacy. Most companies specifically state your emails are not private. I’d have to log out and log back in to see the exact text of the message but, in essence, you have no expectation of privacy on most company networks. It’s not YOUR computer, its theirs. And yes, I think if a company is publicly traded (or who takes a taxpayer bailout) it should have to disclose lots of things to the public.

“When information comes in, our journalists analyse the material, verify it and *write a news piece about it describing its significance to society*. We then publish both the news story and the original material in order to enable readers to analyse the story in the context of the original source material themselves.

…

As the media organisation has grown and developed, WikiLeaks been developing and improving a harm minimisation procedure. We do not censor our news, but from time to time *we may remove or significantly delay the publication of some identifying details from original documents to protect life and limb of innocent people. *”

Lets all hope it is…and better yet…lets hope that something will be down by our government officials when the information comes out. I’m sure the government and talking heads will try to sway our attention of the content by saying how evil and bad this person is for releasing this information.